It is desired to have methods and devices of simultaneous detection and purification of large numbers of proteins of interest (POI). While methods currently exist to specifically detect expression of fusion proteins, they are either not suitable for a high throughput process, i.e. western blots, or are non-qualitative, i.e., ELISAs.
At present, capillary electrophoresis instruments have been adopted to assess protein purity and quantifying yield of hundreds of samples within a few hours. Most of these methods lack the capacity to detect specific POI, making them poorly suited for screening for protein expression within complex samples, such as cell lysates. Consequently, there are limited means to detect fusion protein expression in a high throughput setting, despite the increasing need. It is desirable to have the ability to detect specific expression within lysates which will allow rapid characterization of starting materials as part of a high throughput protein production pipeline.
Needed in the art are methods and devices for high throughput detection and purification of large numbers of proteins of interest by using fusion tag-specific fluorescent labels and electrophoresis techniques.